Quotation Saturday

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.
~Elizabeth Aston, The True Darcy Spirit, 2006

Let each man exercise the art he knows.
~Aristophanes (450 BC - 388 BC), Wasps, 422 B.C.

So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
~Brenda Ueland

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.
~Charles W. Eliot (1834 - 1926), The Happy Life, 1896

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
~Henry James (1843 - 1916)

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.
~Martha Washington(1732 - 1802)

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.
~Euripides (484 BC - 406 BC)